The air around the shattered battlefield pulsed with residual mana, thick like smoke from a funeral pyre that had burned for a thousand years. Rubble littered the obsidian floor—fragments of ancient runes that had once held the power to bind gods now glowing faintly under the moonlight that bled through the fractured ceiling above like silver tears.
Valerian stood with one boot planted atop the broken statue of the First King, grinding marble dust beneath his heel. The monument—a symbol of the old world's glory—crumbled beneath him like everything else that had dared stand in his path.
"I should've known," he muttered, his voice carrying the weight of bitter revelation as he glared down at the bloodied corpse of Lord Veylin. The man's final expression was one of pure betrayal, eyes wide with the shock of a father's love turned to ash, lips parted in a silent scream as the sword of spectral flames still burned through his gut, cauterizing flesh and soul alike.
